A strong earthquake struck off Indonesia’s Tanimbar Islands in the east yesterday, but there was no tsunami alert issued and no reports of immediate damage, the country’s meteorology agency said.
The US Geological Survey (USGS) pegged the quake at magnitude 6.0 and its epicenter was 270km north-northwest of Saumlaki at a depth of 56km.
The USGS had initially put the magnitude at 6.2.
“The quake was only felt in Tual island, off the Moluccas islands but we haven’t received any report of damage,” an official at Indonesia’s Meteorology and Geophysics earthquake center said.
Ceremonies took place in Indonesia yesterday to mark the fifth anniversary of the devastating Indian Ocean tsunami that struck after a huge earthquake off Sumatra in 2004.
The tsunami killed 226,000 people in 13 countries, with 166,000 killed or missing in the Indonesian province of Aceh.
A subsidiary of a Hong Kong-based company that has lost control of two critical ports on the Panama Canal said it is seeking US$2 billion of compensation in damages from Panama over its “illegal” takeover of the ports. Panama Ports Co, a unit of Hong Kong’s CK Hutchison Holdings (長江和記實業), on Friday said in a statement that it is demanding the sum under international arbitration proceedings that it had already started. The Panamanian government last week seized control of the Balboa and Cristobal ports on each end of the Panama Canal, after the country’s Supreme Court declared earlier that a concession allowing
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